


What Is A Man?

by FleetSparrow



Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: First Time, John Watson is a Good Boyfriend, M/M, Trans Sherlock Holmes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:28:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24368089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FleetSparrow/pseuds/FleetSparrow
Summary: In which Watson is a keen student of anatomy and Holmes finds himself for once pleased to be a subject.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 12
Kudos: 108
Collections: Favorite ACD fics, Holmestice Exchange - Summer 2020





	What Is A Man?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Strampunch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Strampunch/gifts).



It was in Holmes’ directly indirect way that he announced one evening over dinner his attraction to me and his desire that we should act upon it.

“This is the only time, Watson, that I request you not ask how I knew, for I’m sure you understand, as I, that truly we are of a kind that seeks our own level.” His eyes matched the light mirth on his lips, the sardonicism which was typical of his humor.

“And so you put it forth so casually?” I asked, my own tone teasing. “I say, Holmes, that’s not the usual way of doing it.”

“Not at all! I merely waited the appropriate amount of time until the topic could be brought up without undue denial.” He looked at me squarely over his glass. “I do so weary of denial.”

“Then I am glad you have brought it up at all,” I said. “Especially so I can say yes.”

He smiled, and then said nothing more about it while we dined. He played his violin for me, some of my favorite pieces, as though trying to make up for the abruptness of his confession. I will say, now, that I thought at the time, I could not possibly love him more.

The hour was getting late, and I was anxious to hold him for the first time as a lover. I said as much, and we retired to his room. We kissed and held each other like a pair of young lovers left alone for the first time. I almost think he would have been content to remain like that, but I needed to touch him, to feel his skin against mine.

I began to undo the buttons of his shirt when he drew back from me. Startled by his own action, Holmes put his hands on my chest.

“Let me,” he said, and he kissed me again.

I allowed him to remove my shirt, his long fingers eagerly finding my skin. I took one of his hands in mine and kissed it, from fingertips to palm and back. Those beautiful hands that played so majestically on the violin, now played upon my flesh. Holmes let out a soft moan, his eyes closing. When he looked back at me, his gaze was piercing.

I kissed him, and laid him down, peppering small kisses down his neck to his collarbone. His breath hitched as I undid his shirt, his body almost stilling beneath me. Slowly, however, he started to breathe again, and pressed against me to let me finish my task.

“Watson,” he said, holding my hands. “I must ask you not to look on me as something horrid.”

“How could I, Holmes?”

He pressed my hands to his chest. He must have seen my confusion, because he let go of me and closed his eyes.

I saw at once the cause of his hesitance. His chest, though as singularly thin as the rest of him, appeared to have small breasts, enough to be covered by his everyday wear but clearly distinct when naked. I assumed some glandular condition, though I had seen no other remarkable symptoms.

“Well, is that all?” I said, laughing. “Good lord, Holmes, I thought you were going to reveal part of an absorbed twin or something. That’s certainly nothing to be ashamed of.”

“Isn’t it?” he asked, and though his tone was nearly teasing, there was something in those startling dark eyes that belied frivolity. “Well, then I suppose there’s no reason to keep waiting.” He stretched up on one arm and wrapped himself around me.

I ran my hand over his chest with, I’ll admit, more of a doctor’s hand than an amorous one, testing the soft flesh around his nipples. He seemed no more interested in my touch there than any other part of his chest—though how Holmes showed interest and excitement was a mystery I was more determined to find out than any we had consulted on—his nipples pricked up in autonomic reaction (no damage to the nerves from swelling, no skin discoloration or discharge).

His hand slid along my spine, making me start with a gasp. I was no stranger to physical closeness or intimacy, but I had kept myself far from any such pleasures after the war. The complete distraction of the mind was, perhaps, the only thing that kept men sane during such a terrifying ordeal.

Holmes clutched my face, forcing me out of my brown study. He gazed queerly at me, as if reading every thought I ever had, and when he spoke, I could not help to think he was humoring me.

“Where do you go, Watson?”

“To places I don’t wish to go again,” I said.

“Good. Then stay here.”

He kissed me and, not for the first time, I had the feeling that we matched in some strange way, both achingly fitting together like a puzzle with no image. I reached for his trousers, asking for permission. I had such a need for us to come together.

He drew back once again, the darkness coming over his eyes faster than I had ever seen before. I thought I had perhaps misjudged his own cool eagerness.

“You first,” he whispered, and soon his thin hands were meeting mine to free me. For the first time I realized how cool his rooms were, but the arousal in me ran high as he looked me over, his eyes resting heavily on my prick where it stood at attention, hot and stiff.

“And now you?” I asked, lust thinning my voice to near pleading. But again, he drew back.

“You have seen much in your studies of anatomy,” he said, suddenly at the edge of the bed. “Both from our collaborations and your own history in medicine. Have you not?” He asked the question as almost an afterthought, but there was a weight to it which kept me from answering immediately.

“You know of the variety of bodies, the way in which Nature can work so cruelly against those she breeds. You know the ways in which Man can be fooled by Her and continue upon such wreckage.”

It was unsettling to see him as such, hunched over himself, so tense I could map his skeletal structure through his skin. He had turned his back to me, again looking as if he was fighting himself not to leave.

“Holmes,” I said, pressing my hand to his back. He didn’t visibly flinch, but I felt a tremor beneath my touch.

“Sherlock,” I said. “I have seen men lose limbs, eyes, _jaws_ , for that matter. I have seen living Siamese twins present themselves as an anatomical study. I’ve seen belching corpses, for God’s sake. There is nothing so hideous in you that could make me turn away.”

I will admit, I was becoming rather conscious of my nakedness before him in a rather desperate attempt to rationalize what he could be so ashamed of in his own physique. The scars from his boxing days, perhaps? But had he not shown me his chest with such marks on it already?

“Please.”

He took a deep breath—when had he stopped breathing? When I touched him?—and stood.

“I will…hold you to that,” he said. Slowly, with what appeared to be terribly precise movements, he undid his trousers and let them slide to the floor.

As I had before, I was tempted to laugh away his embarrassment. He was certainly no Callipygian Venus, but I had seen many a lad younger than he with less to offer. I was about to tell him so when Holmes turned around.

I would like to say now that I had, with all of me, intended to look upon whatever anatomical curiosity Holmes possessed with a clear eye, and then entreat him to rejoin me. I was not, I will freely admit, prepared for exactly what I saw, nor was I prepared to catalogue it.

Holmes had no phallus. I feel no need for further eloquence here, because the simple fact was just that. While my mind was reeling, trying to classify what my eyes told me against what I knew to be true, Holmes watched me with empty eyes.

“And, so! What are your thoughts, doctor?”

Words failing me and my mind equally—a vulva, along with breasts, what else could he be?—I reached out to him.

“Come to me,” I said.

Watching my face with an intensity that nearly scalded, Holmes climbed back onto the bed. I pushed him down and leaned over his stomach, tracing my hands over the bones of his pelvis. His features so gaunt, so slim despite his muscles told me of a history of starvation and ascetics meant not only for mental sharpness, but physiological control, to keep a body he felt made against him under his complete dominion, one which he no doubt had felt the unceasing punishment of bearing.

I rested my hands around the dense mass of his pubic hair, framing it, and what lay below it, like a work of art. I looked to him.

His breath had ceased. Only the searching gaze of his dark eyes and the nearly imperceptible rise of his chest told me he was with me. For the first time in our relationship, I was unconscientious of his eyes upon me. I was proving myself to him as he had to me; it was the time to reveal ourselves as we were.

“Will you let me touch you?” I asked, unmoving.

After what seemed like minutes, he nodded.

“Yes.”

I leaned back onto my haunches and gently parted his legs, just enough to clearly see what I knew was there. I had read of such cases, usually deemed abnormal here in England, but often well thought of in more exotic corners of the world. But Holmes.... I had known Holmes as a man—as he was—for many years now. I would never have said anything about him would have made me question the veracity of what I knew to be unwavering fact.

Sherlock Holmes was a man. Biology could be—and probably had been—damned.

I ran a finger down his vulva and was rewarded with a catching hiss. Still, I stopped.

“Is this all right?” I asked.

Holmes licked his lips. “Yes.”

I continued, trying to keep myself from examining him as a specimen. Much later, he would laugh to know I had had such a thought and would encourage it as our new relationship grew.

“What would you have me do?” I asked, the tip of my finger already damp with love’s liquid.

He straightened and reached his hand to mine. “Are you honest?” he said, with a passionate concern no Hamlet has ever matched. “Are you honest?”

“Yes,” I said. It was no trap of madness he laid for me, but fear and concern that this tenderness between us may be snatched away in an instant. “You are the handsomest man I’ve ever known.”

He laughed, and for the first time of the night there was no bitterness beneath it.

He grasped my hand. “Then let me show you.”


End file.
